|
|
 |
| |
|
Home > Baseball > MLB Hall of Famers > Whitey Ford
Whitey Ford
Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.
Whitey Ford was born on 21st October 1928 in New York, New York. His height is five foot ten inches with weight 181 pounds. He was inducted with the Hall of Fame in 1974.
His most eye-catching statistics are his consistently low ERAs, the Earned Runs Average and his high winning percentage. In 11 of 16 seasons he was under a 3.00 ERA, and his worst was 3.24. His .690 winning percentage ranks third all-time and first among modern pitchers with 200 or more wins. Of course, he benefited from strong Yankee bat support, defense, and relief pitching, but his winning percentage was usually higher than the team's. He allowed an average of only 10.94 baserunners per nine innings and posted 45 career shutouts, including eight 1-0 victories.
In 1961 new manager Ralph Houk put him in a regular four-man rotation, and Ford led the AL, the American League in 39 starts and 283 pitched innings and earned the Cy Young Award with a 25-4 record, leading the ML, the Major League in wins and percentage. Two years later, he again led in wins, percentage, starts, and innings pitched, with a 24-7 mark. At the time there was only a single Cy Young award for both leagues. Sandy Koufax won for 1963, but Ford was voted the top AL pitcher. They opposed each other in both the first and fourth games of the 1963 WS, the World Series with Koufax winning both times. In game four Ford lost a two-hitter on an unearned run.
The Yankees won 11 pennants in Ford's years with them. He ranks first all-time in WS with 10 wins, 8 losses, 22 games and games started, innings pitched, hits, bases on balls, and strikeouts. In the 1960, 1961, and 1962 series, he pitched 33 consecutive scorelesss innings, breaking Babe Ruth's WS record of 29-2/3.
Back to MLB Hall of Famers
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|